1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a system and method for capturing, storing, retrieving, and transmitting patient medical records, including longitudinal history and imaging throughout the healthcare system environment, and more particularly, to a system and method for communicating patient medical records that provides optimal medical information service to a subscribed recipient by managing an integrated medical information processing and transport system. The present invention provides total interoperability of patient medical records information between all present EHR/EMR electronic medical records base systems.
The present disclosure further provides for the ability and functionality to generate, capture and transmit a comprehensive set of medical information in compliance with CCD/CDA/C-CDA interoperability standards from a host health records system to a smart card for use in transport of same to a distant care provider, and the ability to open, view and download the data files in a manner that the data can be uploaded into a disparate system in use by the care provider in connection with providing medical services.
While other existing solutions are capable of copying medical files to a flash drive or similar storage device in a non-structured format, such process yields the stored data generally useless in being capable of being captured, uploaded and parsed into disparate electronic medical records based systems or in structured format. Due to the vast amount of data contained in a typical user's medical record, and using traditional methods for handling medical records, this has limited the application for electronically transferring medical records.
The present invention provides for the ability to upload data associated with any/all medical services provided by distant physicians and transport such data to the host system whereby the data is parsed into the host medical record as structured data.
2. Brief Description of Prior Art
Comprehensive medical care often requires a patient to visit more than just one doctor. While many patients have established a long-standing relationship with their primary care provider, they are generally unfamiliar with more specialized doctors until medical circumstances necessitate a referral to one. Upon receiving a referral, the patient is usually left to arrange an actual appointment with the specialist. However the patient usually relies upon the patient's primary care provider to timely forward the patient's relevant medical records to the specialist prior to the scheduled appointment. There is little transparency in this process, and under unfavorable circumstances a patient may find himself/herself referred to a doctor who has not been given access to the necessary medical information relating to that patient due to slow delivery, mistaken delivery, and/or failure to deliver. These hurdles may cause delays in medical care, and in some cases even dissuade patients from complying with their primary care provider's recommendation to seek additional medical care from a specialist.
Existing EHR/EMR (Electronic Health/Medical Records) systems do not always communicate with each other whereby patient information can be exchanged.
Other existing solutions in the prior art only copy medical files to a flash drive or similar storage device in a non-structured format which yields the data useless in being capable of being captured, uploaded and parsed into disparate medical records systems. Additionally, the medical files or data is generally in an unprotected state and susceptible to unauthorized access and use.
The problem does not end with the sharing of patient's medical records. There is no protocol for sharing of patient information between the primary and secondary care offices. The process requires someone to establish communications between one or more of the patient's primary care physicians and the secondary care physician(s). The inefficacies in managing this process are a drain on both the primary and secondary physician(s) offices. Often times, the patient, who has the least amount of medical knowledge and often an inability to anticipate or articulate the critical nature or timing of the referral, is left calling one or both offices and communicating with a receptionist who cannot independently determine what the next step in the process should be, without again involving either the primary or secondary care physician(s).
The issues described above have been long-standing problems for both physicians and patients, and substantially interfere with the ability to provide appropriate and cost effective medical care. Every existing electronic medical records based system known to applicant relies upon the health care institution and/or care provider to manage the patient's medical information independently.
The present invention provides total interoperability and portability of patient medical records information between all present EHR/EMR electronic medical records based systems. The present system manipulates the patient's updated medical records data to be sent to a referred physician into a format that can be retrieved and used in the referred physician's electronic medical records system with the ability to return data in the same specified format for integration back into the originating system database as structured data.